I'll be there on Sunday on the Midget & Sprite Club Stand. Among the eight cars on show, we'll have a MkII Alloy Bodied Austin Healey Sebring Sprite and a couple of Drag Racing Spridgets which should break the heart of the purists. Pop over and say hello, just ask for the editor.

First time at the NEC. The show was very BIG and tiring after a full day. Lots of cars and lots of people. I did expect the club stands to be more exciting in terms of set building. Some nice cars and some rare ones but I doubt if I would go again. Race Retro is more my scene.

The an A Type, more specifically AL10 the last of the run. The "L" in the chassis number denotes long as the last two cars built had a longer chassis. AL10 is also notable for featuring Hillborn Travers fuel injection.
AL10 was raced for many years by Alan Cottam and was a long term course record holder of the short course at Prescott used by the VSCC.

Yes, we had the Lynx on our LFOC stand thanks to the untiring efforts of our man who organised us, which involved going to Essex to get it (and again today to take it back) and the Owner & Son who let it come, even in its unfinished state, and were there throughout. Lots of young ladies seemed to like it, but as their grandmother can't have been at the 1960 Motor Show, nobody in period bought one!
The Connaught on the Motor Sport stand was a bonus for us, except that the young ladies on duty had been provided with a poorly researched description so were telling people total rubbish in good faith. One of my colleagues had seen and photographed it and said "what a pity it is an Alta engined one not a Lea-Francis". His photo of the engine showed not only was that wrong but there was sufficient for one who knew a little more to say it was AL10! I went to see and saw some of the brief (on a "telephone") and it seemed to have put a few random Connaught facts together and assumed that they all applied to AL10, whether they did or not. Auctioneer's blurb probably.
Not my sort of event made worse by the venue and silly things like stupidly loud PA which therefore distorted the spoken message anyway and as you were within range of dozens of loudspeakers suffered additionally from the message arriving dozens of times at a few microsecond intervals. We asked them to turn the volume down and the organiser's representative claimed he could not as it was the Venue (as the customer he could have insisted, we thought) and no-one had complained before (A flat lie, as other stands near ours had done so and it was "our turn") which is the sort of statement that annoys greatly.

ETA Dutchy's post appeared whilst I was tryping mine - it was the fuel injection that gave away which car it was from the photo of the engine. When I mentioned Alan Cottam to the girl with the notes, she rattled off the names of most of the period Connaught drivers without saying which had actually driven AL10 and of course no mention of Alan

I did expect the club stands to be more exciting in terms of set building.

Yes I have noticed that set building has gone out of favour in recent years, I suspect due to the hoops you have to jump through nowadays for health and safety reasons. I remember many an elaborate rally set I've been involved in that we'd never get away with nowadays. My club (Mini Cooper Register) even had a works rally Mini hoisted aloft on a forklift some years ago, I can't imagine trying to get that idea past H&S now !

It would be wonderful to be able to build sets, but within the time allowed. If a club, as we are (In the Midget & Sprite Club), is made up completely of volunteers most of who work during the week. It's tough enough getting the cars (we had eight) in and then out again with the time allowed. Let alone having the luxury building and then deconstructing sets.
I agree that it would be much more entertaining to see more imaginative stands.

I think this "elaborate sets" idea loses sight of what's in it for the clubs at such a show.
As Gary says, most are run by volunteers and I would say they are there to raise the club's profile in order to gain new members - and of course meet existing members. That isn't really enhanced by "exciting" set building and although we did admire the Riley RM club's stand we had no feeling of envy!
Near us were several professional clubs which just spread a few cars over lots of space.
As Gary also says, there is not time to do anything really complex and with the NEC's traffic (non-)system a lot of that time could elapse waiting for the driver of a crucial vehicle to find the right queue to wait in.

It was undoubtably very popular but perhaps not our cup of tea as motorsport enthusiasts. I agree about the Motor Sport stand girls and I do wish some of the magazines would put their actual staff members on the stand rather than hiring promo girls. A girl on the Classic Cars stand was very off hand with me and more interested in chatting to a couple of photographers.
I saw some cars I had not seen before and bought a few things but I doubt if I would go again.

A girl on the Classic Cars stand was very off hand with me and more interested in chatting to a couple of photographers.

So sorry to hear that, DM. Our Editor was on the stand all three days but not for as long as he would have liked - also had to cover the Show (and appear on the Live Stage) - but that's no excuse for the girls being offhand. I'll pass on the feedback.

We did have two drag racing Spridgets (one a turbo charged A series and the other with a V8) as well as the Pedro Rodrigues driven alloy (standard) bodied Mk2 Sebring Sprite. So three of the eight cars were racers.